Chapter 2. The CLI Management Tool

In this chapter, we will describe the Command Line Interface ( CLI ) management tool, which can and should be used to control your entire application server, that is, the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (also JBoss or just EAP).

The application server itself comes with two different management tools: the CLI and the admin console (also called the web console). The latter lets you manage the platform mostly at high-level operations, such as starting, stopping, and restarting JBoss instances, and configuring datasources. Thus, the web console is best for viewing the overall configuration and server instances topology (especially when dealing with the domain mode).

On the other hand, CLI is the best tool to manage your application server in depth, as per its features, your deployments, and JVM settings.

A deep knowledge of the CLI gives you full control over your platform. Despite the management aspect of the CLI, you should concentrate on some of its features, such as the following:

• Atomic operations
• Repeatable operations
• Batching operations
• Execute commands reading a file

Another important aspect of the JBoss EAP configuration is its two main concepts: subsystems and profiles.

A subsystem is a particular set of capabilities that extend the application server core, such as EJB3, CDI, Infinispan, JGroups, and Transaction Manager, just to mention a few.

A profile is a set of subsystem configurations. A standalone server runs a single profile. Managed domain servers can have many profiles, with different servers running different profiles.

The CLI is your Swiss Army Knife, and because it is such a powerful tool, it integrates with the JBoss EAP security system, which supports different authentication stores. But let's start from the basics.